On November 1, 2012, Stuart Shieber, James O. Welch, Jr. and Virginia B. Welch Professor of Computer Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, will discuss “Two problems in scholarly communication, and how to solve them.” The talk will take place in the Seuss Room at Geisel Library at UC San Diego, and will last from 3:30-5:00 pm with a reception following from 5:00-6:00 pm.

“In the sciences, research results are disseminated through the journal article. In the humanities, scholarly monographs are the predominant medium. Both distribution systems are exhibiting severe signs of distress, but the sources of the problems are quite different. I will describe the symptoms in the two modes of scholarly communication, diagnose the underlying problems, and propose treatments, some proven and some speculative.”

Professor Shieber’s primary research field is computational linguistics, the study of human languages from the perspective of computer science. His research contributions have extended beyond that field as well, to theoretical linguistics, natural-language processing, computer-human interaction, automated graphic design, the philosophy of artificial intelligence, computer privacy and security, and computational biology. He is the founding director of the Center for Research on Computation and Society and a director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

He received an AB in applied mathematics summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1981 and a PhD in computer science from Stanford University in 1989. He was awarded a Presidential Young Investigator award in 1991, and was named a Presidential Faculty Fellow in 1993, one of only thirty in the country in all areas of science and engineering. He has been awarded two honorary chairs: the John L. Loeb Associate Professorship in Natural Sciences in 1993 and the Harvard College Professorship in 2001. He was named a fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence in 2004, and the Benjamin White Whitney Scholar at the Radcliffe Institute for 2006-07.

His work on open access and scholarly communication policy, especially his development of Harvard’s open-access policies, led to his appointment as the first director of the university’s Office for Scholarly Communication, where he oversees initiatives to open, share, and preserve scholarship.